The responsiveness of a computing device is an important characteristic of its performance. Ideally, a computing device is able to respond to a user as quickly as possible.
For example, storage devices attempt to provide access to their stored data as efficiently and as quickly as possible. Today, solid-state drives (SSDs) have become popular due to their near-zero data access-time delay (DATD) performance relative to hard disk drives (HDDs). HDDs, however, still offer higher capacity storage at a lower cost relative to SSDs. Accordingly, HDDs remain popular due to their high capacity and durability. Indeed, many known products, such as solid state hybrid drives (SSHD) now provide a combination of SSD and HDD as a storage solution.
HDDs normally have a high DATD because they are frequently put into a standby mode in order to conserve power, etc. For example, mobile devices, such as a laptop, wireless Network Attached Storage (NAS), or any other mobile device, frequently employ aggressive HDD standby policies. HDDs may also be put into a standby mode for data safety reasons during various movements the head would not make contact with the disk.
Unfortunately, when exiting standby mode in response to a data access request, an HDD may take a long time for the drive to spin back up. Moreover, as the hard drive capacities increase, the DATD may also increase when coming out of standby mode.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide methods and systems that can minimize the DATD of a HDD. It would also be desirable to provide methods and systems that can improve the responsiveness of any computing device, especially after idle periods of time.